About the Briefing
Independent reporting. Local insight. Community connection.
Independent reporting. Local insight. Community connection.
Mill Valley is a town with a strong sense of who it is. The Dipsea Race has been run through the same redwoods for more than a century. The counterculture put down roots and never really left. Music and art aren't amenities here — they're part of the town's DNA.
The Mill Valley Briefing covers the news and stories that help residents stay informed and connected. Through a daily newsletter, a podcast that goes deeper into the people and culture that give this town its character, and live events that bring the community together — we're here to do this place proud.
Civic news and community stories, verified before publication and delivered to your inbox.
Conversations that go deeper into the people, culture and history that give Mill Valley its character and legendary status.
Community gatherings built around the conversations worth having in person. Where the Briefing comes off the page and into the room.
Sixteen years at the BBC as a journalist, editor and team leader took Franz from the Amazon to the Northwest Territories, through bureaus in Bangkok and Berlin, four US presidential elections, civil unrest from Ferguson to Rio de Janeiro, Olympics, World Cups, natural disasters and the investigations that take the longest to tell. Along the way he built and led some of the BBC's most-prominent digital teams, and was responsible for some of its most ambitious audience growth in North America. In January 2026 he arrived in Mill Valley with his wife, two small children and their dog, and a simple conviction: that trust in journalism is earned. The Mill Valley Briefing is his commitment to putting in the work and earning it here, close to home.
Paul Liberatore is an award-winning Bay Area journalist who has written about rock music and pop culture over the past five-plus decades. Until his retirement in 2018, he was a longtime music and feature writer for the Marin Independent Journal. Since then, his music and entertainment column appears biweekly in the IJ and other Bay Area News Group papers. In the 1980s, Paul was on the staff of the San Francisco Chronicle as a general assignment reporter, feature writer and assistant city editor. As an author, his nonfiction book, “The Road to Hell,” an investigation of the Marin County Courthouse Shootout was a New York Times Book of the Times. He has been honored with a Milley Award from the City of Mill Valley for his contributions to the arts and became the eighth recipient of the County of Marin’s Cultural Treasure Award in 2014. He has also been a musician, fronting his own band, the Liberators, and is proud to have been a member of the Bay Area writers band, the Rock Bottom Remainders.
Independent reporting. Local insight. Community connection.
